The Greek's Pregnant Bride

‘Show me what?’

He straightened his shirt, then turned back to face her. ‘I’ll take you to meet her. You can see for yourself why I don’t want my mother anywhere near our wedding.’

* * *

The car came to a stop outside an immaculate two-storey house in a quiet Athenian suburb.

No sooner had the engine been turned off than Christian got out, not bothering to wait for the driver to open the door for him.

The entire drive had been conducted in silence, Christian sitting ramrod-straight, only the whiteness of his knuckles betraying what lay beneath his skin.

It was a demeanour Alessandra had never seen from him before. It unnerved her.

That he’d cancelled his first appointment of the day had unnerved her even more; that, and the grim way he’d said, ‘Let’s get it over with.’

a deep sense of dread that she followed

white hair appeared at the door, lines all over her weathered face, her thin lips clamped together in an obvious display of

she turned on her heel and walked back

pristine, a strong smell of bleach pervading the

a beautiful

of hiding it. She made no show of hiding her disdain for Alessandra, refusing her hand when Christian introduced them, and looking through her when Alessandra said, ‘Hárika ya tin gnorimía,’— ‘pleased to meet

stench

she said enough to make the pulse in his jawline throb. When he replied, his answers were short but measured. At one point he seemed to be the one doing the talking rather than

Alessandra had never sat in such a poisonous atmosphere as this, or felt as

was something almost unhinged in Elena Markos’s demeanour. Her eyes were the same blue as

being raised by this woman made her skin feel as icy as Elena’s eyes. But Christian couldn’t leave it to imaginings. He’d lived it, every

of emotional entanglement when this was

flitted back to their many conversations at Mikolaj’s taverna. She’d said the name Markos stood for guts and determination but had not appreciated then exactly how